Tim McFeeley, former Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC (1989-1995), elaborates the mandate of the HRC during his tenure and the overwhelming struggle in the face of the AIDS crisis. Detailing the struggles facing gay men in the 1990s, McFeeley discusses the HRC’s mission to secure healthcare for those living with HIV and AIDS seeing through the the passage of the Ryan White CARE Act (1990) which allotted federal funding to cities suffering the fallout from AIDS. Addressing the changing mission of the HRC during the Clinton presidency, McFeeley highlights the organisation’s work to secure HIV/AIDS funding during the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) period noting the rifts these competing narratives posed diving many within the LGB community. Noting the exclusion of women’s voices within the HRC and underscoring the role of lesbians fighting alongside gay men during the entirety of the AIDS crisis, McFeeley considers some of the recent threats posed to women’s rights as a result of the promotion of gender identity current within the LGB community where he notes the difficulty of the subject “because it’s a class of rights and it feels like for one to win the other has to lose.”
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